by Harvey Kraft
The Universe of Infinite Wisdom
The Golden Mountain World System
The Cosmos of Relativity
The Perfectly Endowed Reality of the Lotus Cosmology
These four cosmologies provide a multifaceted, interactive, yet indivisible picture of existence. Together they describe Buddhism’s all-encompassing and integrated super cosmic system—where no physical form could ever be immortal, no soul could exist as an independent entity separate from a body, and no effect could take place without a cause.
In the Buddha’s Universal-Mind everything was related to something else; neither existence nor any single component of it could come into being by singularly spontaneous origination. It was impossible to separate the mind from spirit, or body from mind. Nor could there ever be an actual separation of person from environment, as nothing could exist without a place to exist; nor could there ever be a separation of space from time, any more than the wind could be separated from air.
The scope of his reality extended far beyond the perceived limits of existence—beyond the mortal world, beyond the realm of the divine, beyond the relative Universe, beyond the birth of the present Universe or its eventual end. The Buddha saw the True Reality of Existence as a transcendent, infinitely boundless field where everything was evolving; everything was alive in one sense or another; and countless diverse emanations appeared all sharing an inseparable relationship.
The Buddha’s multi-faceted super-structure was an all-encompassing cosmos itself a Buddha from which all Buddhas emanated. In a colossal cosmic vision he illustrated that Perfect Enlightenment was a Perfectly Endowed Reality hidden within all human beings.
What was the purpose of this visionary revelation?
To inspire human beings on to the path of evolutionary self-transformation, a quest that will lead all to finding this perfectly endowed, shared, and boundless True Self.
CHAPTER ONE
The Dual Cosmology
The shamans had made a simple map of the world. In the center was a mountain. From it other worlds radiated out in six directions. Starting with an “X” to mark the sacred spot, they extended four lines in the direction of North, South, East, and West. Then they drew a vertical axis through the mountain connecting the nadir and zenith from the world below the surface to the one above the sky. The six orientations of this Mondial Cosmology represented the first large-scale design of the world. Shamans used it like a compass to guide their trance travels to far-away places. Seers sitting at the intersection, the world axis, or axis mundi, of this cosmogony used its channels to “see” across great distances in every direction. Their special sense allowed them to anticipate approaching dangers and plan their tribe’s hunting and gathering sojourns. It also opened their eyes to discover spirit dimensions beneath the surface and above the sky.
As shamans evolved into priesthoods, they discovered astral gateways that led them into the divine realm. There they came into contact with the gods. The Egyptians and Sumerians built pyramids and ziggurats, each designed as a super-charged axial conduit for interworld exchanges. In due course, concluding that the gods lived in an immortal realm overseeing the mortal one, religions cast existence as a Dual Cosmology—one physical and the other a spiritual domain. Courting their favor, the clergy invited the gods to descend to Earth.
In the sixth century BCE Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, achieved a visionary breakthrough that revealed an unsurpassed scope of existence. His profound cosmic visions illustrated a boundless and dynamic universal super-infrastructure. He then elaborated on the Truth of the Reality of All Existence through the revelation of four integrated cosmologies.
Based on the theme that the mind and the cosmos were connected, he shared with disciples his access to the ultimate picture of time-space, scale, and dimension.
His visions were the culmination of trance explorations dating back to the first shamans to walk out of Africa and the great celestial seers across the ages from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Central Asia and India. Siddhartha Gautama, a master seer of the profound and virtuoso of the colorful mythic language of those great cultures, also conveyed his views using symbolism and metaphor.
During his lifetime, Babylon was the world’s cosmopolitan and intellectual center. The stubborn city had undergone a long history of destruction, brutality, rebellion, and resurrection. Under the rule of the Persian Empire it was a melting pot of diverse cultures. This was also a time for new religions and the development of new ideas in philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics.
In Babylon, influenced by ancient shamans and Mesopotamian seers, Siddhartha Gautama helped to found the field of philosophy, became the city’s religious leader, and briefly became its king—the world’s first philosopher-king.
After a coup and purge he was forced to flee for the Indus Valley forest where he achieved Perfect Enlightenment. In Babylon he had observed that brutal authorities dominated the world and religions had become obsessed with immortality. Determined to share an alternative view of the inner workings of existence, he steered his disciples towards higher consciousness through cosmic explorations.
As the Buddha, he revealed that humanity was on a cosmic journey in search of the consummate Truth of Existence, a quest that started long, long ago with the first awakening of humans to the possibility of unseen realms hidden within and beyond the visible world.
THE BIG BREAKTHROUGH
Relying on their keen instincts, a small band of scavengers had mastered the ability to walk upright and wandered off on a worldwide quest. The smell of death permeated their world. To survive its teeming dangers they had to keep moving. Some 3.8 billion years after primeval life forms first inhabited the planet, these fierce, valiant, and curious explorers walked far and wide in constant awe of the cosmic canopy continuously hovering above.
Pressing on and on, night and day, driven by a fervent desire to behold whatever may loom ahead—no matter where it led—they migrated across vast continental tracts peering into every nook of the vast world. They may have departed their ancestral homes on a hunt for food and water, or in a flight to safety, but along the way their journey turned into an expedition. Everywhere they searched they found a struggle for survival where death always prevailed. Theirs was a beautiful, but harsh, dangerous, and purposeless world. Or so it appeared until at some decisive moment something triggered in them the climactic emergence of higher consciousness.
The turning point for the transformation of humans from instinctual to conceptual beings was a sudden awakening to the possibility that life concealed an awesome mystery. This shocking leap forward from primitive to transcendent awareness launched humans into an ever-evolving quest for visionary sight and the comprehension of life in the Universe.
What caused this singularly epochal change in human capacity?
Living a ceaselessly challenging adventure inside the dangerous change-engine of nature, they observed that animals and plants suddenly would acquire new powers that defied prediction. Only those species with the ability to gain new abilities would survive. Those unable to adapt to nature’s sudden and unpredictable changes would die. Massive climate disasters repeatedly wiped out the bulk of their populations, impressing upon these curious humans the need to survive all threats. Observing that some animals had developed various means for survival, they desperately wanted to figure out how they could do the same.
What gave various animals the ability to fly, run faster, live underground, or develop great strength? Was it the strength of their desire to survive, they wondered?
With the scent of impending doom in their nostrils, they desperately desired to penetrate nature’s power of self-transformation. Hoping to fortify their chances for survival, they attempted to grasp the secret to combating life’s unrelenting dangers. Suddenly, at least one or more human beings became convinced that without achieving the power of “a greater knowing,” it would be only a matter of time before their kind would become extinct.
In a stag
gering burst of enlightenment, with this one earthshaking, cathartic thought they instantly unlocked the talent for conceptual vision:
All that is must have emanated from that
which is beyond what is apparent.
The power to “see the unseen” appeared suddenly, as if it emerged in a dream. It was as if an emaciated man went to sleep wishing to grow very powerful arms and legs so that he can be a more successful hunter. Upon awakening he discovered that his wish had come true. But instead of powerful limbs, his desire to survive produced a larger brain. With it he now could figure out how to hunt more effectively and safely. But, in addition, this power delivered an unexpected talent no other animal had acquired. Early humans had manifested the awesome gift of insight, the power to conceive and imagine possibilities, an evolutionary leap they passed on to modern humans.
UNSEEN SPIRITS
The most skillful among the early beneficiaries of spatial reasoning and conceptual vision quickly sensed the presence of invisible entities hidden in nature. With their “mind’s eye” they pictured spirits inhabiting everything—the land, animals, plants, and inanimate objects. The spirits imbued their hosts with life-fueling nourishment, protection, fertility, and energy. In plants the spirits produced healing herbs and fruits. Spirits living in water bestowed it with sweetness and the ability to quench thirst. Certain spirits produced the willingness of self-sacrifice in animals so that humans may be able to eat them.
Spiritualism was the world’s pre-historic religion of beliefs about the natural world. As it spread across the globe with the migration of tribes, it evolved numerous cultural variations but shared a common cosmology. It divided the natural world into a Dual Cosmology composed of two parallel dimensions, the visible-physical-mortal domain and an invisible- spiritual-immortal dimension.
Hidden within nature was a complex Spirit World composed of many types of spirits inhabiting all things. Spirits could attach permanently to any physical entity, be free to move in and out of it, or they could function independently of a host. Whenever a good spirit would abandon an entity in its place a wild spirit would invade and cause chaos, such as turning animals into dangerous beasts or triggering droughts or storms. Human tribes realized that it would be prudent policy to have spiritual go-betweens able to contact the good spirits and appeal to them to stay and provide protection, fertility, food, and medicines. They appointed a person skilled in communicating with the spirits of nature, a shaman, to intercede and negotiate on behalf of the needs of tribal communities.
Having received the “great knowing” of Spiritualism, the shamans now beheld with dread and admiration the fragile balance of life. They observed the great spirit of the sun to grow plants, give light, and produce fire; the moon to offer sight in the dark of night and rule the tides; and the comings and goings of unpredictable natural phenomena like rains, winds, and earthquakes. They sought the cooperation of the unseen spirits in plants and animals to provide them with food and the weapons needed to survive in a dangerous world. To procreate their kind they engaged life-giving spirits in nature for the blessings of fertility.
SHAMANS
The first shamans were “Spirit-Talkers.” In a state of constant conversation they communed with animals, plants, streams, and the sacred ground they walked. They sought to keep the invisible spirit-creatures aware of and engaged with their community.
A second generation of shamans heard the spirits. These “Spirit-Listeners” had the ability to receive information, read omens and signals sent from beyond, and convey critical information of value to the nurturing and sustenance of their clan. They designed trance-inducing rituals for the purpose of hearing and talking with the spirits. Experts in gleaning the messages concealed in the tufts of nature the shamans espoused the belief that they made contact and gained an affinity with the tribe’s protective spirits.
A third generation of shamans declared that they had pierced the veil of the Spirit World—initiating the ability to compel the spirits to take action on behalf of the tribe. These “Spirit-Callers” induced “magic” rituals, often requiring sacrifice, to conjure, consult with, and convince the spirits to heal the sick and injured, feed the hungry, and save the endangered. The callers designed increasingly euphoric dances and concocted hallucinogenic prescriptions for stimulating hypnotic visions and trance channeling.
A fourth generation of shamans achieved the role of “Spirit-Seers.” Not only could they speak to spirits, hear spirits, and call upon spirits; they had developed “distance viewing” skills to see into the far reaches of the Spirit Realm.
These visionaries turned their eyes to the sky to gaze upon the sun, moon, and stars. Observing that the heavenly bodies embodied Universal Order, the power to regulate day and night and the seasons, the mystics wondered who or what was responsible for this power? Indeed, they concluded that since the spirits animated all things in nature, would it not follow that they also inhabited the celestial giants above?
The seers recognized that the engines powering the heavenly bodies were giant celestial spirits. These were moody Titans wielding overwhelming elemental and natural forces. The Great Spirit inhabiting the sun would illuminate the day or choose to set the land ablaze with scorching heat; the Spirit of the Moon would offer sight in the darkest of night, or willfully unleash the frenzied spirits of lightening, thunder, and wind.
Throughout nature the awe-inspiring celestial Titans employed legions of dutiful spirits. Given their profound impact on the functions of nature, seers deemed these Spirit-Titans to be masters of the spirit realm on Earth instructing the elemental spirits to provide the light, rains, and the temperatures essential to the growth of plants and the sustenance of life on Earth. They needed the cooperation of unseen spirits for the energy to survive and thrive in a dangerous world, for the strength to resist the siege of hardships, and for the blessings of fertility to procreate their kind.
The shamans declared that the unseen spirits ever brandishing their awesome powers in every facet of the physical world, the sky, sea and land, had been sent from the spiritual domain above. Therefore, it would be wise to pay homage to incur the favor of the mighty Spirit-Titans.
MONDIAL COSMOLOGY
The first-ever large-scale design of the world came about when tribal seers introduced the Mondial Cosmology. It mapped the earth as a circular flat surface surrounded by water. Three intersecting axes (two horizontal and one vertical)—North to South, East to West, and nadir to zenith—converged at the center of the world usually designated as a sacred mountain. The two directional axes pointed outward to four corners where spirit realms were to be found beyond the oceans. The world construct included three levels with a vertical channel connecting the Earth in the middle with the Heavens above and an Underworld below. This map had been discovered among many tribes across the continents.
At the axial intersection of this world cosmology shamans saw a giant energy channel, like a pillar, holding up the sky. This “spiritual column” was embodied as three kinds of devices, including: (a) The Cosmic Mountain, marking the center of the world, its peak rising above the sky and connecting the land with the heavens; (b) The Sacred Tree of Illumination, conducting energy through its roots, trunk, and branches and reaching out to the stars, working like a nervous system between the ground below and the sky above; or (c) The Ancestral Totem, a single column representing the cosmic conduit for ancestral spirits who traveled between their communities and the afterlife world.
These models represented the first cosmology connecting one point on Earth to multiple points in Heaven, or multiple points below ground through the earth to multiple points above, or multiple points on Earth to one point in Heaven, or one point on Earth to one point in Heaven. The shamans were determined to use trance travel through these routes to learn about the unseen worlds.
Thus began a visionary exploration of the world beyond.
Using their extraordinarily intuitive gifts, the Spirit-Seers visually entered an
d scaled the topmost strata of the “Mountain-Tree-Totem” where for the first time they entered the celestial abode. Through ritual ceremonies and sacrifices the shamans aligned the mondial coordinates to open the two-way gate to the other worlds.
The visionary shamans piercing the divine world utilized controlled trance-travel techniques to mentally “fly into and over” the transcendent landscape without physically engaging it. Journeying beyond the horizon of sensory-based consciousness, their minds crossed into unexplored territories, exotic other worldly domains occupied by unearthly forms.
By exploring the vertical channel of the Mondial Cosmology they discovered the realm of the gods. Observing the lands of the gods above and the low-world spirit creatures from below, the seers told of giant gods seated like kings on colossal thrones, and spirits in their service. Then the seers learned that divine- and spirit-beings were using the same vision channel to travel at will between worlds.
The unseen gods inspired awe. They possessed the grandest of all powers. They were the creators of existence, makers of Heaven and Earth, designers of laws, and rulers of all beings. In time, as seers learned more about the divine world, they came to the conclusion that the gods were immortal. Their domain had no death. On the basis of this differentiation they adopted a two-sided view of existence composed of a mortal and immortal world. This was the fundamental principle of the Dual Cosmology.
Once the shamans fully appreciated the local power they could exert with their special skills, they determined to become messengers of the gods. To facilitate their role as spiritual intercessors, they invited the gods down to Earth. From this point forward, the entire Spirit World fell under the tutelage of the gods, and the shamans took claim of the role as their spokespersons.